1. Exercise: understanding authenticity evidence
(Student version)
Silvio Salza,
CINI - Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
The purpose of this exercise is to help the audience understanding:
Which events in a digital resource lifecycle are relevant to the management of authenticity and provenance
Which authenticity evidence should be collected and preserved when these events occur
Which controls should be carried out by curators, in order to make sure that the integrity and the of the digital resource are preserved
The exercise is organized as follows:
The whole story is briefly outlined: the first task given to the student is to understand which are the events of the lifecycle one should concentrate on.
For each event, a more detailed description is given, and the student is asked to read it carefully and to identify the authenticity evidence that should be collected, and possibly the controls that the curator should perform in order to help ensuring the authenticity of the preserved digital resource.
Slides come in two versions:
Instructor version: contains all the slides and all the comments.
Participant version: the version that should be distributed to the participants before the course. Contains a subset of slides, those with the description and the questions, not the one with the answers. This is to stimulate the student to think about and figure out autonomously the solution.

2. The storyboard
A medical report is written by a doctor, digitally signed and then submitted to the hospital document management system.
Several checks are performed when the report is filed, and the related information is recorded.
Later, the format of the report is changed, from MS Word to PDF/A, by the document management system administrator to provide a more suitable format for preservation.
Appropriate checks are performed after the format migration, to make sure that the content of the report has been properly maintained. Details of the format migration process and the outcome of the checks are recorded.
At a later time, part of the hospital archive, including the report, is moved to a long-term preservation repository. The change of custody is properly formalized, and the ingestion process includes a few transformations and checks.
Read carefully to make sure to understand well the story.
Consider that this is possibly a stable workflow: a large number of medical reports are going through the same lifecycle. The curator studies the workflow once for all, decides about the evidence to be collected, and then the same evidence is collected and the same controls are performed every time.

3. Identifying the main lifecycle events
For our purposes, the lifecycle events we need to concentrate on are those that may affect the authenticity, i.e. its provenance and its integrity. Typically:
Changes of custody: when the responsibility of storing/preserving a digital resource moves from one keeping/preservation system to another, including the first time a digital object is filed after its creation. These events are relevant to the provenance.
Transformations: when a digital resource bit-steam is modified for whatever reason, e.g. format migrations. These events are relevant to the integrity.
TASK 1: Analyze the lifecycle of the medical report, as described, and identify the main lifecycle events.
Understand how these two kinds of events affect respectively the integrity and the provenance.
Go back to the storyboard in the previous slide and read it again carefully, try to identify the relevant events. During the class presentation the instructor, after discussing the issue with the audience will show slides with the solution to the task.

4. CAPTURE: description
On May Dr James Allen writes a medical report about Ms Amanda Miller (SSN ). After completing the report he digitally signs it. Then Dr Allen at 10:34 am connects to the St Andrew Hospital document management system and authenticates himself by using his smartcard badge # and files the digitally signed report. The system, which during this shift is under the responsibility of Kevin Orwell, system administrator, gives the report the identifier #MR (unique within the system), checks the digital signature and stores the report and the related metadata, which include date, time, provenance (identification and authentication data of Dr Allen) and integrity (check of digital signature and document hash).
TASK 2. According to the above description and to the following template, discuss which authenticity evidence should be collected and preserved for this event.
Try to understand from the description which authenticity evidence is relevant for this event and should be collected.
Try to write down a template for the Authenticity Evidence Record for this event and to fill in the related evidence you may find from the description.
During the class presentation the instructor, after discussing the issue with the audience will show slides with the solution to the task.

5. FORMAT MIGRATION: description
On November at 11:12 am, Ismael Whaler, then system administrator in duty, as part of the standard procedure, performs a format migration on digital object #MR , from format docx to PDF/A, by using Adobe Acrobat X Pro. The new identifier #MR is given to the new version of the report. Then Ismael, as a standard routine, generates a hash of the new file and performs a few checks, to make sure the content of the report has not been affected. The checks are: compare the number of pages in the two versions and the page breaks for every page. All checks are successful. The original docx version is included in the new digital object.
TASK 3. According to the above description and to the following template, discuss which authenticity evidence should be collected and preserved for this event.
Try to understand from the description which authenticity evidence is relevant for this event and should be collected.
Try to write down a template for the Authenticity Evidence Record for this event and to fill in the related evidence you may find from the description.
During the class presentation the instructor, after discussing the issue with the audience will show slides with the solution to the task.

6. INGESTION: description (1)
On May at 18:15 pm, Mary Giveaway, then system administrator in duty at the St Andrew Hospital document management system, about one year after the original report was filed, according to the standard procedure, submits the current version of the report (i.e. the digital object #MR ) to the long term digital preservation repository.
Mary, who is among the registered users enabled to submit digital objects as SIPs (Submission Information Package, in the OAIS model) to the LTDP repository, authenticates herself by means of the OTP generator # Then, Andrew Forever, administrator in duty at the LTDP repository, manages the ingestion process that produces a new AIP (Archival Information Package, in the OAIS model) within the LTDP repository.

7. INGESTION: description (2)
The process includes generating a new persistent identifier for the preserved object (LTPMx045F ), generating a new hash, and performing an integrity check and a check of completeness of the metadata, according to the submission agreement subscribed by the producer.
While generating the AIP, all the authenticity evidence in the digital object, i.e. the Authenticity Evidence History, becomes part of the PDI (Preservation Description Information in the OAIS model) .
TASK 4. According to the above description and to the following template, discuss which authenticity evidence should be collected and preserved for this event
Try to understand from the description which authenticity evidence is relevant for this event and should be collected.
Try to write down a template for the Authenticity Evidence Record for this event and to fill in the related evidence you may find from the description.
During the class presentation the instructor, after discussing the issue with the audience will show slides with the solution to the task.